Monday, February 25, 2008

Third Sunday in Lent

3rd Sunday in Lent
February 24, 2008
John 4:5-42
Thomas Arth



Neil Alexander, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta,
tells a story about something that happened to him one day
as he was walking down the street in New York City.
"It was early on a weekday morning
and even though spring was just around the corner,
the night had been cold and the morning air still had a bite to it.
As I was walking to the church
to get there in time for an early morning celebration of the Eucharist,
I encountered a homeless man who had slept the night
on an old piece of cardboard.
He made his bed over a sidewalk grate
near the steam exhaust of an apartment building.
"It was the best he could do.
He was still shivering from the cold;
his clothes were thin.
He had no gloves, no hat, no topcoat.
I suspect he had not eaten in several days.
As I passed him on the sidewalk, our eyes met,
and when they did, I knew I would have to stop for a moment
to speak to him and ask if there was anything I could do.
He didn't ask for much.
He didn't want a coat or a better place to stay.
He didn't even ask if I had any food vouchers
from one of the neighborhood delis.
I reached in my pocket,
thinking I would give him a couple of quarters for a hot cup of coffee.
But he seemed not to want anything
that might make his life more comfortable
on this cold morning on the streets of the city.

"‘No, Father,' he said,
‘all I need for you to do is to give me a blessing.'
‘Give you a blessing?' I asked,
somewhat surprised by his request.
‘Yes, that's all,' he said, ‘a blessing.'
So I knelt down beside him on the sidewalk,
said a prayer with him and laid my hands upon his head
and gave him a blessing.
With a peaceful look upon his face,
like he had received a gift that he had been waiting for
for a very long time, he picked up his cardboard bed
and a little bag of belongings
and walked haltingly down the street in the opposite direction."

It wasn't a chilly early New York morning,
instead it was noontime under a hot sun.
Jesus sat near a well just outside a Samaritan town.
Noon on a hot day is no time to be out and about in that part of the world.
If you're going for water,
which meant lugging some heavy jars back and forth,
then you go in the cool hours of the morning.
That's what everybody does.
You meet all your neighbours around the well,
catch up on the latest news.
But at noon, you don't want to be doing that kind of hard work
not at that time of day.
That's the time for a siesta somewhere out of the sun.
At noontime on this day there are only two people at the well.
Jesus has been walking and he sits to rest while the disciples go
to replenish their provisions for the journey.
And there's a woman.
Why is she coming at noon?
Maybe she's tired of the way people talk to her
and talk about her when she approaches.
She'd rather suffer through the noonday heat
than suffer through their insults anymore.
Maybe she's not welcome in the circles of conversation
around the well in the morning.
We hear in the gospel reading that she's had five husbands already
and the guy she's hanging with now isn't her husband at all.
Ashamed. Shunned. It's just her and Jesus this day.

She wouldn't be too surprised if he avoided her like all the rest.
You see, because of certain Jewish purity laws most men and women
didn't have much contact with each other,
and certainly not if they were strangers.
Women of a certain age were considered unclean
for about 7 days out of a month
and if a man came into contact with her during that time
he'd become unclean.
The woman who came to the well was a Samaritan
and Jewish men considered Samaritan women unclean
the whole month long, their whole lives long.
Also, this man was a rabbi
and women weren't considered worthy of any sort of discussion
with a learned man like him.
But Jesus doesn't shun her, doesn't avoid her,
he asks her for a drink of water.
"You're a Jew," she replied, "and I'm a Samaritan.
How can you ask me for a drink of water
when Jews and Samaritans
won't have anything to do with each other."
Then this Jewish rabbi starts a theological discussion
with this Samaritan woman.
"You don't know what God wants to give you,
and you don't know who's asking you for a drink.
If you did,
you'd ask me for the water that gives life."

The disciples come back from their shopping
and find Jesus talking with this woman
and are surprised.
They don't say anything but surely they're thinking,
"This isn't right."
"What's he doing?"
But Jesus is always surprising them.
Does he surprise us anymore,
or do we have Jesus all figured out?

Pastor Kevin Powell who's a friend of mine
wrote this on his weblog this week:
I've met the woman at the well, several times.
Once, it was a woman in a dirty, smoke-filled apartment.
She had called the church for help and I went to go see her
armed with a bag of groceries.
As I was leaving she said,
"I want to go to church, can I come to your church?"
Those were her words but that wasn't what she was asking.
What she was really asking was
"Will someone like me be welcome in your church?"
I pictured her in our pews,
her gray greasy hair, her yellowed fingers, soiled skirt,
and her booze and nicotine stained breath,
mingling with men in ties and suit jackets,
women in dresses and children in jeans.
Nice, middle-class folks.
Nothing wrong with that.
It's who we are.
And I thought that like the woman at the well was to the disciples,
she'd be a challenge to our congregation.
But a challenge our congregation would definitely step up to.
"Yes," I told her,
"we'd love to have you worship with us."

That's what that pastor wrote about his congregation.
Could we say the same for ours?
When I came here, nearly 6 years ago, I couldn't have asked
for a warmer welcome from the people of this church
and so far nobody is showing me the door.
But the reception a new pastor and his family receives
isn't always the same one
that another person coming into the church might receive.
In the meantime we've welcomed a few new people into our church family
and I've heard from some of them
that they felt just as warmly welcomed
by the people of this congregation
as I felt when I came here.
But when you look at our congregation
they're not all that distinguishable from the rest of us.
"Nice middle-class folks,"
as Pastor Kevin described his congregation.
But what if the woman at the well came among us?

Who might the woman at the well be for us?
Might it be the guy with the wild hair
who passes you on the street talking to himself?
You think to yourself, "What does he want here anyway?"
And since you've grown up in the same town
and know the kind of things he's been involved in
during his life you also know
that he's not the kind of person
that we normally get in this place.
Would he really fit in?
Maybe this is the only time he'll come here.
He'll soon see that this isn't the place for him.

Who might the woman at the well be for us?
Might it be the teenager who's never been in a church,
who doesn't understand the order of service
the way it's printed in our bulletin,
and who fidgets through the entire service
disturbing the people sitting behind her?
She probably didn't know that we have a traditional style of worship.
Maybe she was thinking this is one of those churches
with drums and a praise band.
Surely that's what she's looking for in a church.
She won't be back.

Who might the woman at the well be for us?
Might it be the gay couple who try to be inconspicuous,
but everyone can tell?
They've been shut out or have been made to feel totally unwelcome
in some of the other churches they've tried.
They're hoping that this church might accept them.
What do they want with our church anyway?
They're just going to stir things up and anyway,
their kind make a lot of people uncomfortable,
and the Bible is very clear that their lifestyle is sinful.
If we give them the cold shoulder
they'll move on soon enough.

Who might the woman at the well be for us?
Might it be the woman of questionable morals?
The last one out of the bar on many a night.
The one who's not too choosy about who shares her bed.
The one whose skirt is too short, whose blouse is too tight,
whose make-up is too bright, whose jewelry is too flashy.
This is no place for her.
She'll soon be back to sleeping in on Sunday morning.

Who might the woman at the well be for us?
Might it be the kid who's been suspended from school a few times
for bullying?
He's got no manners, doesn't respect his elders,
always talking back to teachers.
Do we want a kid like that in Sunday School with our sweet kids?
What kind of influence will he be
when we're trying so hard to raise good and polite children?

Who is the woman at the well for you?
How do you look at her?
Jesus could have seen a woman, an unclean woman,
a woman unworthy of conversation with a rabbi,
and left it at that.
But he didn't.
He saw a daughter of God.
He saw a troubled soul.
And he couldn't help but share living water with her.
"No one who drinks the water I give will ever be thirsty again.
The water I give is like a flowing fountain that gives eternal life."
After her conversation with Jesus
the Samaritan woman forgot what she even came for.
She left her jar by the well and ran back to her village
and told everyone about this Jesus.
This Jesus who didn't just follow rules.
This Jesus who showed love, showed compassion.
This Jesus who had the gift of eternal life to give,
to give even to a sinful Samaritan woman.

Bishop Alexander was on his way,
on that cold spring morning,
to serve as a priest, to preach the gospel,
to give Holy Communion to the people.
On his way a homeless man asked him for a blessing.
That's what priests do. It seemed so normal.
But the priest discovered that he was the one who received the blessing.
Instead of a well in Samaria, it was a steam grate in New York City,
but there the priest met Jesus who quenched his thirst
and gave him a taste of eternity.
Who is your woman at the well?
Could it be you?
Maybe you're the sinner
and maybe Jesus is the man with the wild hair,
the teenager who's never been to church,
the gay couple,
the woman in the short skirt,
the schoolyard bully.
When you think you've got Jesus figured out, think again.
He might just surprise you.
Jesus comes to us, Jesus meets us, and our lives are changed.
Then we might say,
along with the people from that Samaritan village,
"We have faith in Jesus because we have heard him ourselves,
and we are certain that he is the Saviour of the world!"
Amen

Tagged

Kevin tagged me for this meme:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five other people.

The nearest book is one I bought simply because the title intrigued me and it was in the bargain bin. I haven't read it yet. It's called The Christian and the Pharisee: Two Outspoken Religious Leaders Debate the Road to Heaven by Dr. R.T. Kendall and Rabbi David Rosen. Here it goes.

"Most of them became either universalists, annihilationists, existentialists, or all the above. Some of them left the ministry they had come to train for since they came to regard the Bible as a faulty and unreliable document and saw no reason to uphold the faith they once thought they believed. I was exposed to the same evidence they had examined, I read the same books they read and explored the same higher criticism of the biblical documents that so many of my friends took on board."

Now, who to tag...
LutheranChik, Andy, Kelly, Beth, and Melissa, you're it!

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Books I've Read

So, Kevin listed all the books he read last year. I don’t read that much but I thought I’d share about the books I’ve read so far this year.

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

This book must have received a lot of media hype last year because I ended up with 3 copies of it. I was at a local discount shop, a place that gets a lot of one-off stuff, remaindered stuff, stuff with a torn box but the contents are perfectly good. I’ve noticed a lot of Costco stuff in that store. And they sell it at a great price. It’s our favourite store in town. But I digress.

Just before Christmas we were in there and I saw this book, read the jacket, and it looked interesting to me so I bought it. Well, it’s true that you shouldn’t buy yourself anything just before Christmas because I got it as a present from a sister-in-law, explained that I already had it, and passed it on to my brother-in-law. Then, just after Christmas, at a 12th Night Party a parishioner gave it to me as well. I explained that it was now my third copy and passed it on to someone else at the party and said she could just pass it on when she finished with it.

It’s a really neat book. It’s interesting. It’s funny. It makes you think. Jacobs admits that he’s an agnostic but it started to sound like he was discovering something profound as the year went on. The Holy Spirit? I noticed it the most when he wrote about prayer. He prayed because it was commanded but his praying seemed to change the way he thought about people and things. It’s like if you pray for someone you can’t help but start to feel godly toward them.


Living Lutheran: Renewing your Congregation by Dave Daubert

I find this to be a very practical book. Daubert is now part of the A.R.E. (A Renewal Enterprise) team of Kelly Fryer and Tana Kjos. If you read Fryer’s Reclaiming the "L" Word: Renewing the Church from Its Lutheran Core then you might remember the "Five Guiding Principles" that she and her congregation came up with during their renewal.

Daubert writes about developing and using a Purpose Statement as well as developing Guiding Principles to help with congregational renewal. He even gives a sample day-long retreat agenda for developing the statement and principles. I’m hoping/planning to do this in my congregation.
An example that I found enlightening and (hopefully) encouraging refers to an ELCA study that found that after a decade-long churchwide evangelism strategy, membership and attendance overall had declined. The study found that declining and growing congregations had tried some of the same evangelism techniques and tactics but the growing congregations were almost always clear about two things. "First, they were clear about their purpose or their vision for ministry. They had an understanding of what God was doing and how they could be a part of that. It was known and shared by the membership. It was as important to many in the pews as it was to the pastors in the pulpit. Second, these vibrant congregations showed an openness to change in order to be faithful. ‘We’ve never done it that way before,’ was replaced with, ‘What do we need to do to be effective for God?’" (p. 15).

When I mentioned this to our council earlier this month I was greeted mostly by silence but at least no opposition.


The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

I received this book from another sister-in-law who got it used herself and then passed it on after reading it. I really liked it. It’s rather sad at times, but there is redemption as well.

This is a screwed up family because of one decision that turned into a secret that snowballed into an unhappy marriage, an unhappy family. The truth does finally come out in a way but it doesn’t make everything better all of a sudden. It’s realistic. Even though it doesn’t end "happily ever after" I found it to be a happy ending.


Reclaiming the "C" Word: Daring to be Church Again by Kelly Fryer

This was a re-read. I love the stuff Kelly Fryer writes. I’m a regular visitor to her blog. Her next "reclaiming" book is supposed to come out this week, Reclaiming the "E" Word: Waking Up to Our Evangelical Identity. I look forward to getting it and reading it. Fryer is challenging to me. I get excited by the possibilities that I see for our churches. But I like some of what the church is and does and sometimes she says, or implies, that what we’re doing is holding us back from being all that we can in God’s mission.

I’m kind of a fan of the vestments, the ceremony, the liturgy, the organ, the old hymns. Can’t we keep that as we renew the church, as we dare to be church again? It might take a while for me to let go of some things and take others up.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Crappy TV

We've become more and more disappointed with what's on TV. I admit that I'm something of a TV junky. But there used to be much better stuff on the tube. What ever happened to sitcoms? There used to be stuff on there that you could watch with your kids. There are still sitcoms on TV but very little that I'd consider suitable for watching as a family. Most of them seem to be about sex. I find some of them funny but only watch them once the kids are in bed.

The problem is all of the "reality" shows. You don't have to pay actors. You don't need very talented writers. You just need some idiots who want to make fools of themselves by singing badly, by locking themselves into a house with a bunch of strangers, by doing stupid stunts

A few years ago we started buying some of our old favourite programs on DVD. We've got the entire series of M*A*S*H, we've got some seasons of Home Improvement, some seasons of I Love Lucy, some Happy Days, some Cosby, some of the britcoms like Vicar of Dibley, Bless Me Father, As Time Goes By, Ballykissangel, All Creatures Great and Small.

What's annoying is that we bought the first three seasons of Boy Meets World and the first season of Murphy Brown and now we've found that they're not releasing any more of either of those series because sales were less than they hoped for the ones they did release. AAARRRGGGHHH!

Monday, February 11, 2008

If I Were American

I took a quiz here and it told me how closely I agree with the different presidential candidates in the U.S. It turns out I’m a Hillary fan. Here’s how the numbers came out for me.

Clinton — 90.31%
Obama — 88.02%
Huckabee — 70.69%
Romney — 68.10%
McCain — 67.19%
Paul — 64.57%

I know I’m on the left side of the political spectrum. I haven’t followed the races in the U.S. very closely so I didn’t really know who I favoured based on issues or personalities. This quiz puts only 2.29% between Clinton and Obama when it comes to my agreement with them.

I find it very strange how different candidates seem to get support from different segments of society. For instance one gets more hispanic/latino support, another black support, another women’s support, another union support, then the various religious factions and their support. Then it often hinges on personalities and endorsements by various politicians and celebrities.

I wish elections were held, and people's votes were cast, based on a real platform and real issues rather than soundbites and fragmenting the population into various interest groups. Tell me what you're going to do for me, for my country, for my planet. But more importantly tell me what you're going to do for those who can't speak up for themselves, for the ones who need a lot more help than I need, for future generations.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Lent?

The season after Epiphany was too short. Now it's Lent already. Lent is supposed to mean spring. But Lent will end just as spring starts.

So, what do I give up for Lent? In years past I've tried giving up pop and chips. I managed to do it but was miserable about it. Is that the point of fasting from something?

This year I decided that instead of giving anything up I'll take up a few things. I'll be more intentional about reading the Bible (other than what I have to read to prepare a sermon), setting aside time for prayer (besides the anytime, anywhere prayers), and I'll add some physical activity into my routine. So:
  • I'll read the daily scripture readings suggested in my desk calendar.
  • I'll pray the Great Litany (LBW p. 168 or ELW 238).
  • I'll get out the skipping rope and get my heart rate up and try to gradually increase the time I spend at it.
How does that stack up to the discipline of Lent that contends against evil and resists whatever leads us away from love of God and neighbour? Self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love? Maybe part of that is in there.

I'm preaching tonight about alms-giving, fasting, and prayer (Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21). Really I'm quoting a lot from Walter Wangerin Jr.'s Whole Prayer: Speaking and Listening to God where he talks a bit about those disciplines. Maybe I'll slip some fasting into my lenten discipline. I don't know how, yet, or when. But I'll have to find some way to do it without it making me miserable.

Have a blessed Lent everyone.